My surgery is in a month and honestly I’m struggling. I’m really struggling with the fact that I don’t think my husband understands or takes seriously the literal seriousness of this procedure.
Back story, I’ve struggled with PCOS my entire life. Extremely heavy bleeding and horrible cramps every month. When I was on the pill BC I was able to skip periods or shorten them to a few days and it wasn’t too bad. However, when I went off BC after getting married in hopes of getting pregnant they started right back up to the worst of the worst. 10 mo later we were pregnant and I found out I had fibroids. When they delivered my daughter via c-section at 27+2 due to severe preeclampsia and IUGR they took those fibroids out. Now 2yrs later they are back and bigger than before. Even with Mirena my periods are lasting 10-14 days of heavy bleeding and since my risk for preeclampsia is so high I’m not going to be adding another baby to the family so we agreed a partial hysterectomy was a good plan.
Oddly enough I was supposed to have it in March but my provider had a medical emergency and she was in the hospital herself so here we are with it on the horizon. Here’s where it gets harder… my husband has never broken a bone, had a surgery or really anything like that which I think is making it really hard for him to relate. He’s never seen his parents have a major procedure yet has seen me fracture my back, have retina surgery, have a C-section, have my gallbladder removed, then have gallstones in my common bile duct and need an ERCP for that, and just recently a surgery on my ears… I’ve bounced back pretty well from all of it. C-Section was the toughest but I pushed through to get to the NICU for her.
Anyways he doesn’t seem to understand the severity of this procedure or how I will HAVE to rest and cannot over do anything or it will be a bigger issue. Plus there’s the concern that my bladder may be adhered to my uterus resulting in a more complicated procedure. He is so nonchalant about it. I’m worried bc he truly hasn’t taken any of my procedures with some real seriousness. Unfortunately he wasn’t present to see everything when they delivered our daughter bc he couldn’t get there fast enough. I had been admitted to the hospital for 8 days at that point. He was at work and 2hrs away. He made it there for when I came out but not to be in operating room. I think if he had it would be so different.
What do I do? How do I make him understand. He was floored when I said I cannot drive for 4 wks. He thinks I’ll be able to return to work quickly, but I told him it will be on a very part time schedule after 2wks. He didn’t understand bc he said I can sit to do it why can’t I go back sooner and for the full schedule? How do I make a man who has never experienced true physical pain understand?